Small Mercies
by Measured
Summary: She takes him under her green mantle, she does not let him go. Kyo/Tohru, spoilers galore.


Title: Small Mercies  
Series: Fruits Basket  
Character/Pairing: KyoTohru  
Rating: PG  
Summary: She takes him under her green mantle, she does not let him go. KyoTohru, spoilers galore.  
A/N: 11th - Fruits Basket, Kyo/Tohru - Kyo's monster form: could you understand beauty of the beast? Direct spoilers all the way to the ending of the manga. This is essentially an excuse to make one huge Tamlin allusion. (That was even the original title). A certain amount of the prose was inspired by Comte-Sponville's _A Small Treatise on the Great Virtues_.

It's months after she comes before he feels connected to her enough to grip at his bracelet and feel the sickening lurch of his stomach. There's something so damn beautiful about her. It's like coming home. And to him, there is no more desperate beauty than that of home, of love and acceptance. And with this, there's a sense of impeding doom, of something started and already rolling. A velocity that can't be stopped, an object in motion, an object in rest. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. A girl loses her mother, a boy is about to lose his freedom. Butterflies and hurricanes, isn't that how they say it? They've loved each other for years without meeting, as foretold ships in the night. Isn't that how it is? He loves the little girl from the anecdotes long before meeting her.

So when it comes, the catalyst, the beast, it isn't a surprise. They always come, it is only time that was the question. When, not if.

He is fetid with the hate of generations. It is rotten under the pores of the monster before her. She gags as the brunt of that hatred hits her. It is death and dying and dead. The Kyo that looks up at her is wild, and wary. Eyes of a cat, a monster look at her, expecting to be cast aside.

She takes him under her green mantle, she does not let him go. The creature that is Kyo, that he has become growls and shudders. He is burning lead and a rod of iron; a snake and a horse and a cat. He is all and one but most of all, he is Kyo. The one she's always wanted to hold and accept. Since the first time she heard the telling, she heard story of the cat. Since then she's empathized – a feeling higher than sympathy, a thing higher than pity. His pain was her pain, his suffering, hers too. Through the night she does not run, even when she is frightened, even if she wants to.

And in her eyes, he isn't something horrible, only something hurt. If he were any smaller, she'd probably carry him inside and feed him warm broth. He isn't ugly to her.

Something in him changes that night. It is marked, a drastic becalming, a change. The path diverges from this night, and even days before seem strange and distant. There is an Ignis Fatuus, a light in the distance. Is that what best to feel the stirring of warm, the fabled hope he'd never known? It is the best words he can give to such a thing.

She is full of small mercies. The quiet facets of her, the shy smiles, the places she leaves open for him, sweet things, and leaving out leeks. She airs his futon and smiles at him in a way that makes it harder and harder to accept his death, figurative and literally. Around her, he wants to learn how to _live_. He falls so fast, he is entwined with her without even realizing. He almost doesn't want to admit it when it comes. But when he does, the feeling is cathartic. Of saying it, even if not aloud.

_I love you so much. So damn much._

Yet he remembers the final judgement, the grasp of Akito cold about his neck. He remembers the beast, lovingly tamed by her touch. He knows his fate, and feels glad to have known her before then, even for such a short time before he is to be caged. He is resigned to his fate. He loves her from afar, and wishes her a world he can't give her.

But he underestimates her, and himself. Something has already broken, a hold, a tether. Something is freed from that night and cannot be caged again. She looks up at him, unknowing, accepting and the warmth that has taken hold of him is inescapable.

Even with the rage of a storm, a torrential rage of Akito cannot stop his release. A fairy queen, a cold god, a breaking. Had he the power, Akito would have given him a heart of stone. Perhaps that was the intent, to make the cat a statue hidden in secret gardens. And to Akito's credit, he almost succeeded. Had Tohru come any later, he might have been too far gone, to the point where he welcomed the room as an asylum. There, he would at least be alone, with only his hate as his companion. There, the jeering would quiet, there, would be his tomb long before he died.

Burying one alive, shunning, in the end they were the same. Only one lasts far longer, and far crueler than the other. In the end, one cruelty is like another, interchangeable, equal parts of the same.

Of course she is the one who breaks the spell. Not with a kiss, or a journey to far lands. It is almost anti-climatic when it comes, without reason, the last bond broken away, dissolving away to nothing. And then, it is only the future to come with a strange past that seems embroidered, dreamed up in fancy until it is easier to believe that every day before then was a long sleep he had woken from.

.The animal's dance has finally ended, the god turned mortal, finite flesh, the beast tamed. In the end, all that's left is living. It is a life she'd won and wrested away for him, and for that he grateful, so deep in a way that goes beyond words, beyond gestures to the pure marrow of a feeling. But she knows, she knows even if he'd never find a way to thank her for that love, if the only repayment he could give was living and being happy and loving her. She always knew even if he never said a thing.


End file.
